In recent years, nonwoven fabrics have been widely used for clothing, materials for industry, engineering construction, agriculture, and various filters in surroundings of human life and various industrial fields. The kinds of nonwoven fabrics are divided into staple nonwoven fabrics manufactured by carding a staple and subjecting the carded staple to a needle punching process, and filament nonwoven fabrics manufactured using a spunbond or spunlace process. Conventional nonwoven fabrics were manufactured using a method of manufacturing a nonwoven fabric using a glass fiber or a carbon fiber so as to achieve flame retardancy (fire retardancy). Korean Published Patent No. 2001-79333 (Nov. 17, 1999) discloses a fire-fighting sheet manufactured by inserting a glass fiber mesh between a pair of carbon fiber nonwoven fabrics, allowing a sewing machine needle to stitch up and down each mesh hole, and entangling an upper carbon fiber nonwoven fabric with a lower glass fiber.
The carbon fiber nonwoven fabric manufactured by such a method has an advantage in that a carbon fiber and a glass fiber has excellent heat-retardant and flame-retardant performance, but has problems in that it is difficult to perform a needle punching process through mesh holes of the glass fiber, the glass fiber is scattered in the form of fine dusts during a needle punching process, and thus is harmful to the human body, skin, and eyes of workers, needles are severely damaged due to a compressive force of a needle plate, and the needle-punched nonwoven fabric is damaged. Also, the carbon fiber or glass fiber has problems in that it has a poor thermal insulation property and economic feasibility, and excessive workability is required due to its heavy weight, which leads to a reduction in work efficiency. Also, the carbon fiber or glass fiber has problems in that it is vulnerable to fire since it has no flame-retardancy, and has poor bursting strength and tensile strength.
Therefore, the present inventors have endeavored to develop a multipurpose functional nonwoven fabric and a method for manufacturing the same in order to solve the problems of the prior art.